It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

------------ Kenneth Grahame

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Anything You WantWishing I could just erase myself from the world, where my anger is distressing people, and in which I am finding no joy, just now, and pleasure only of the grimmest and most selfish sort.

For weeks I've been sleeping only five or six hours a night. I need only seven, so that's not all that short for me, but the debt of fatigue accumulates. My body stubbornly refuses either to get well or to get stay-home-from-work ill. I have a low-level cold, and a twitch in my left hand, between the knuckle of my index finger and the heel of my thumb, that is fluttering, as I write here, like the membrane of a drummer-boy's drum. All week I hunch over my monitor or over my reference books, forgetting to shift my reading glasses on and off as I peer from one to the other. My neck and shoulders gradually freeze into a solid mass. Every Sunday Rowan undoes as much of the damage as she can, but it's worse every week, which I think discourages her. One starts a therapeutic career with such high hopes.

I want out. Out of my job, out of my marriage, out of my body.

I have gret wonder, be this lighteHow that I live, for day ne nighteI may nat slepe wel nigh noght

I come to the top of the stairs, and bow to Chenrezig, who seems part of a life impossibly distant. I walk outside under the blue sky of this enchanting false Spring. At evening when I walk up to the porch, the air is drenched with the scent of early-blossoming daphne. All wasted on me.

Well. I'm old enough to wait. To wait, as Arlo Guthrie put it, till the song comes around on the git-tar again.

You can get anything you wantAt Alice's restaurant (exceptin' Alice)You can get anything you wantAt Alice's restaurant.